There is this heavy, almost unspoken expectation hanging over us in the corporate world… the idea that every single professional must be entirely ready to work with AI. We are constantly told that everyone needs to learn AI somehow, and if you open LinkedIn or scroll through any news feed, you will see it absolutely everywhere.
It is exhausting, right?
Courses are multiplying, certifications are spreading like wildfire, and suddenly overnight gurus are popping up to teach you how to prompt your way to a six-figure salary.
I always use the exact same comparison when I see this kind of frantic market behavior because I have lived through it before. It feels exactly like the moment Agile became wildly popular in the software industry.
When Agile hit the mainstream, people started desperately looking for courses and chasing certifications just to stay relevant. The entire market started to grow rapidly around this single topic, and a whole new economy was born.
- Vendors started selling basic certifications as magic bullets.
- Consultants started selling quick-fix courses for complex problems.
- Agencies started selling new frameworks that promised to fix broken cultures.
- Firms started selling expensive consultancy hours to help companies implement things they barely understood.
Now, with AI, the landscape is not any different… it is just moving much faster.
The core problem is that we are seeing a massive wave of knowledge gaps being announced by companies. Organizations are desperate to catch up, and they are frantically trying to fill this perceived gap with all those rapid-fire courses and newly minted certifications.
But it genuinely seems we are not asking the right questions. When it comes to what you should actually focus on right now to protect your career, or what companies are truly expecting from you when they are hiring, we are looking in the wrong direction entirely.